Julia Sweeney's Discussion Forum

That's the problem with your frequent negative responses

I just had a flashback encouraged by your mention of Grandpa pulling a quarter out of his ear, that lends itself to what you are saying:
When my eldest son was six, his father returned from a conference in Europe, during which (don't ask) magic was one of the topics explored..
He showed my son a trick he had learned in the course of the lecture.. which had at its core making a coin disappear by rubbing it (I forget the details).
Very exciting trick..
And my husband showed my son HOW to do it, which the child did really well.
He repeated it a few times... each time it worked perfectly..
And then he said.. " But..okay Daddy.. now YOU make it REALLY disappear."
To him what he was doing was a trick... what his god -daddy was doing was the real thing..
That's why.. so many people want, or believe they need,,, a god -daddy.
N.

Thats great, I have a memory like that (I think) but it isn't coming to the surface enough to relate it here. I feel it though, just out of reach. Funny huh?

CB.

Lausten wrote:
nmb wrote:
That's the problem with your frequent negative responses



Quote:
You are accusing me of this? That's rich. Maybe you should read the book, see if the evidence supports the argument, then we can talk.


Beg pardon?


Norma Manna Blum

Not sure what you are asking here. Maybe it is just a matter of perception. I see your posts as negative responses without much to back them up. You see mine as the same. I am open to the idea that there might something that COULD back up your statements, you just don't supply it, and you explain that you don't think it is necessary to supply it. You just LOL.

One compelling reason not to believe the standard-issue God exists is the conspicuous fact that no one knows anything at all about it. That’s a tacit part of the definition of God – a supernatural being that no one knows anything about. The claims that are made about God bear no resemblance to genuine knowledge. This becomes immediately apparent if you try adding details to God’s CV: God is the eternal omnipotent benevolent omniscient creator of the universe, and has blue eyes. You see how it works. Eternal omnipotent benevolent omniscient are all simply ideal characteristics that a God ought to have; blue eyes, on the other hand, are particular, and if you say God has them it suddenly becomes obvious that no one knows that, and by implication that no one knows anything else either.
. . . .
The knowledge is shaky, yet it’s common to hear people talking as if they do know, and can know, and have no reason to think they don’t know. A lot of people think they know things about “God” which they have no good reason to think they know, and even which seem to be contradicted by everything we see around us. It’s odd that the discrepancies don’t interfere with the knowledge.

People seem to know that God is good, that God cares about everything and is paying close attention to everything, and that God is responsible whenever anything good happens to them or whenever anything bad almost happens to them but doesn’t. Yet they apparently don’t know that God is responsible whenever anything bad happens to them, or whenever anything good almost happens to them but doesn’t. People who survive hurricanes or earthquakes or explosions say God saved them, but they don’t say God killed or mangled all the victims. Olympic athletes say God is good when they win a gold, but they don’t say God is bad when they come in fourth or twentieth, much less when other people do.

That’s the advantage of goddy epistemology, of course: it’s so extraordinarily flexible, so convenient, so personalized. The knowledge is so neatly molded to fit individual wishes. God is good when I win and blameless when I lose, good when I survive the tsunami and out of the equation when other people are swept away and drowned.

This is all very understandable from the point of view of personal fantasy – there’s not much point in having an imaginary friend who is boring and disobliging and always picking fights – but peculiar when considered as a kind of knowledge, which is generally how believers treat it. The winning sprinter doesn’t say “I think God is good,” she says God is good; the survivor doesn’t say “I believe God saved me,” he says “God saved me.” Claims about God are treated as knowledge. Hence the frequent thought – “but you don’t know that … .” If one is rude enough to make the thought public, the standard reply is that God is mysterious, ineffable, beyond our ken, hiding.
. . . .
Because what business would God have hiding? What’s that about? What kind of silly game is that? God is all-powerful and benevolent but at the same time it’s hiding? Please. We wouldn’t give that the time of day in any other context. Nobody would buy the idea of ideal, loving, concerned, involved parents who permanently hide from their children, so why buy it of a loving God?

The obvious answer of course is that believers have to buy it for the inescapable reason that their God is hidden. The fact is that God doesn’t make personal appearances, or even send authenticated messages, so believers have to say something to explain that obtrusive fact. The mysterian peekaboo God is simply the easiest answer to questions like “Why is God never around?”

The answer however has the same flaw that all claims about God have: nobody knows that. Nobody knows God is hiding. Everyone knows God is not there to be found the way a living person is, but nobody knows that that’s because God is a living person who is hiding.

Nobody knows that, and it’s not the most obvious explanation of God’s non-appearance. The most obvious, simple, economical explanation of God’s non-appearance is that there is no God to do the appearing. The “God is hiding” explanation has currency only because people want to believe that there is a God, in spite of the persistent failure to turn up, so they pretend to know that hiding is what God is up to. The wish is father to the thought, which is then transformed into “knowledge.”

It’s a pretty desperate stratagem, though. The fact that we wouldn’t buy it in any other context shows that. If we go to a hotel or a restaurant and everything is dirty and falling apart and covered in broken glass, we want a word with the manager; if we’re told the manager is hiding, we decamp in short order. We don’t forgivingly hang around for the rest of our lives: we leave.